Arizona Senate Bill 1070 "requires a reasonable attempt to be made to determine the immigration status of a person during any legitimate contact made by an official or agency of the state or a county, city, town . . . if reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the U.S." See here and here for the full text.
That illegal aliens and those who profit from them should object to this legislation comes as no surprise. But it does come as a bit of surprise to find native Arizonan Victor Reppert, who to my knowledge neither employs, nor defends in courts of law, nor otherwise profits from illegal aliens, saying this at his blog:
Police in our state have now been given the authority to demand papers on anyone of whom they have a reasonable suspicion that they are illegal aliens. The trouble is, about the only reason for suspicion that I can think of that someone is in the country illegally is if they have brown skin, or speak Spanish instead of English, or English with an Mexican accent.
I'm afraid Victor isn't thinking very hard. He left out the bit about " during any legitimate contact made by an official . . . ." Suppose a cop pulls over a motorist who has a tail light out. He asks to see the motorist's driver's license. The driver doesn't have one. That fact, by itself, does not prove that the motorist is an illegal alien; but together with other facts (no registration, no proof of insurance, speaks no English . . .) could justify an inquiry into the motorist's immigration status. Hundreds of examples like this are generable ad libitum.
S. B. 1070 is a reasonable response to the Federal government's failure to enforce U. S. immigration law. Border control is a legitimate, constitutionally-grounded function of government. (See Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.) When the Feds fail to uphold the rule of law, the states, counties, etc. must do so. If you don't understand why we need border control, I refer you to my longer piece, Immigration Legal and Illegal.
According to one 'argument,' Arizona Senate Bill 1070 disproportionately targets Hispanics and is objectionable for that reason. That's like arguing that the RICO statutes disproportionately target Italians. I don't know whether people of Italian extraction are disproportionately involved in organized crime, but if they are, then that is surely no valid objection to the RICO statutes. The reason Hispanics will be disproportionately affected is because they disproportionately break the immigration laws. The quota mentality is behind this 'argument.'
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